Quincy nurses strike against Steward Health Care marked by bitterness

Rhetoric is par for the course in a labor dispute, but those in the trenches of the battle between unionized nurses at Quincy Medical Center and the hospital’s for-profit owner, Steward Health Care System, say the rhetoric has reached an unusually high pitch

By Jack Encarnacao

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Jack Encarnacao

Posted Apr. 13, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 13, 2013 at 1:14 PM

By Jack Encarnacao

Posted Apr. 13, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 13, 2013 at 1:14 PM

QUINCY

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Both sides have accused the other of lying to the public. Both sides have spent money on full-page newspaper advertisements, mailings, and eye-catching portable signs. Both insist the other is out of touch.

Those things happen in a labor dispute, but those in the trenches of the struggle between unionized nurses at Quincy Medical Center and the hospital’s for-profit owner, Steward Health Care System, say the rhetoric has reached an unusually bitter and potentially damaging pitch.

Nurses escalated the battle with a one-day strike on Thursday, a first for the long debt-ridden hospital. Nurses wore signs and shouted slogans about Steward putting profits before patients, with emphasis on what they call unsafe nurse-to-patient ratios.

Dana Simon, director of strategic campaigns for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, who has helped organize job actions by healthcare workers in several states, said Steward’s public relations campaign has reached a new level of forceful assault.

“I have never seen an employer go out and publicly attack the healthcare workers themselves, the people that provide the care, who are working against great odds to make the sick well,” he said. “I have never seen a company that would believe that that would be either ethical or just smart.”

The leadership at Steward, which purchased Quincy Medical Center in bankruptcy court in 2011, says they have no choice but to respond pointedly when nurses broadcast messages that could erode the public’s confidence in the hospital’s care.

“They’re getting misinformation to the community, and that misinformation may carry forward and damage the hospital’s viability in the future,” said Daniel Knell, Quincy Medical Center’s president and a former nurse. “It may cause a perception that what they’re saying is true, and it’s not. We have proof from outside agencies, quality parameters. Since Steward took over, QMC’s quality has grown exponentially.”

The Steward ads that surfaced this week – including signs mounted on trucks that circled the picket line and read “The future of healthcare is here in Quincy. But the MNA is living in the past” – were paid for out of Steward’s centralized marketing fund, spokesman Christopher Murphy said.

Murphy said each hospital in the Steward system pays into the fund, which can be tapped by any individual hospital for marketing materials. Asked how much was spent in Quincy, Murphy said it is Steward’s policy not to specify how much it spends on marketing.

Steward owns the six eastern Massachusetts hospitals of the former Caritas Christi System – a group that includes Norwood Hospital, Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton – as well as Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton and Morton Hospital in Taunton.